Now On Twitter: More Than 300 Australian Sharks
Great white shark surfacing Brocken Inaglory via Wikimedia Commons Besides donning swimwear and slathering on sun lotion, visitors to Australian beaches may also want to check Twitter to see if there are any sharks nearby. The government in the state of Western Australia has now fitted 338 sharks, including great whites, with acoustic tags which send an electronic signal to shore-based receivers when the animals come within about a half mile of the beach. When this happens, the sharks' location is tweeted out by the Surf Live Saving Western Australia (SLSWA) account. Tweets also include the sharks' species and size. Chris Peck, from SLSWA, told Sky News that the shark tweets will notify swimmers much faster than traditional warnings on the radio and in newspapers. There have been six fatal shark attacks in Australia over the past two years, most recently in November,...